


Trick or Treat

by Edonohana



Category: Marvel 616, New Mutants (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Mutant Powers, Trick or Treating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27167680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: Kurt finds the perfect costume for the annual Halloween party at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Trick or Treat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheliak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/gifts).



Kurt Wagner loved holidays. 

He loved Christmas, especially when celebrated in the traditional German way, sacred and cozy at once: roast goose and Advent calendars, flaming mulled wine and St. Nicholas Day. He loved the holidays that he’d only discovered as an adult, like when Kitty had baked six flavors of hamantaschen for Purim and used Kurt as her taste-tester, or when Logan had showed them how to celebrate cherry blossom season the Japanese way, picnicking under the sweet-scented pink canopies in Tokyo’s Ueno Park. 

But of all those holidays, Halloween had a special place in his heart. It was the only holiday that allowed him to go out in public without hiding behind cap and dark glasses and gloves, and have all the stares be caused by delight or envy at what the starers assumed was the best costume on the streets that night. True, there was a tinge of bitterness in the knowledge that he was only met with such acceptance because they didn’t realize that the demon mask was his own true face. But he tried to take it as the welcome he would receive on that day when all the world learned to see beyond appearances. 

His white fangs flashed in the mirror as he donned his costume. It was not, perhaps, his very favorite, but he couldn’t be a Musketeer every year. He’d lose the fun of watching everyone’s reactions when he arrived in a new costume for the annual School for Gifted Youngsters’ Halloween party. This costume should be especially good for that.

He wished he could teleport into the ballroom itself, but they would soon have trick-or-treaters ringing the bell every ten minutes. Not to mention guests who were unaware of the exact nature of the youngsters’ gifts. He'd have to find another way to make a dramatic entrance.

**BAMF!**

He arrived in the kitchen, startling a guilty pair of New Mutants snitching from a tray of appetizers. Roberto choked and Sam dropped a bacon-wrapped date. Kurt swatted Roberto on the back with one hand, and caught the date and popped it into his mouth with the other. The bacon was crisp and salty, the date soft and sweet. Delicious. The appetizer, he recalled, was called Devils on Horseback. How charmingly appropriate for the holiday.

“Leave a few treats for your teammates,” said Kurt. 

“Sorry,” muttered Sam. He’d taken advantage of his height and lanky build to go as a scarecrow, but he’d done nothing more than tie a sack over his head and stick a few sprigs of hay in his shirt pocket. If Kurt had chosen that costume, he’d have attached a stuffed crow to his shoulder. 

As for Roberto, he didn’t seem to be in costume at all, though he did look very polished in an elegant suit.

“Are you anyone in particular?” asked Kurt.

“Bond,” said Roberto with a creditable English accent. “James Bond.”

“Well met, 007,” Kurt replied. “And you, scarecrow.”

He tipped his hat at the boys, and ducked into a corridor. He might not be able to teleport into the ballroom, but he wasn’t going to let that prevent him from making a grand entrance. A moment later, he stepped out to stand poised at the top of the grand staircase. No one was looking in his direction, so he took a moment to enjoy the sight below. 

Stevie wore a costume from her ballerina days, the Dying Swan with a dress of white feathers and a blood-red jewel at her breast. She was talking to Dani, who stood tall and fierce in her Valkyrie regalia, and Rahne, who, to Kurt’s amusement, was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, complete with basket. Logan leaned against the wall, drinking a beer with another ready in his other hand. Once again, he had refused to wear a costume. 

“Happy Halloween!” Kurt called from atop the stairs.

Everyone looked up at him. A second later, the room echoed with laughter and admiring whistles.

He descended the stairs with rakish dignity, flourishing his sabers (one in his hand, one in his tail) and tipping his white-plumed pirate’s hat. His costume consisted of the piratical outfit that Magneto had dressed Scott in when he’d kidnapped the X-Men to his underwater lair. It was all beautifully detailed with nautical motifs, but the crown of it was the shirt with a realistically detailed, embossed gold octopus with tentacles reaching around to the back. The sabers and hat were Kurt’s additions. He’d felt the outfit needed a little bit more panache. 

Kurt didn’t bear Magneto any serious ill-will, and he trusted Professor X’s judgment in leaving him in charge of the school. All the same, he was curious to see how the new headmaster would react. 

He found Magneto talking to Illyana, dressed as a queen in a surprisingly modest black-and-gold gown with gold jewelry and a filigree crown, and one of the guests from another school, a young knight who had eyes only for her. As Kurt came closer, he observed that those eyes were both adoring and terrified. As he came closer still, he saw that Illyana’s dress was not modest in the slightest: the gold sections were transparent. And also, that her coiling gold bracelets were incredibly detailed cobras, and her earrings were golden scorpions whose stingers pierced her ears and whose claws were poised to grab. Her crown was like one of those hidden paintings made of dots. At first glimpse it looked like an abstract pattern, and then suddenly the image leaped out at you: a thousand faces, distorted with fear and horror, silently screaming. 

She’d obviously gone to Limbo before the party and had her demonic servants dress her. Kurt wished she’d stop visiting that evil place. Then he reminded himself that though she’d grown up in a world halfway to Hell itself, she was still Illyana, Piotr’s little snowflake.

Sometimes it was hard to remember. 

The young knight stared at Kurt. “You’re a… demon pirate?”

Magneto, in old-fashioned men’s garb that Kurt didn’t recognize, gave him a grave nod. “A demon with excellent taste.”

Kurt couldn’t help smiling. Whether Magneto meant it as a joke or not, it made him like the man a bit better. “I don’t recognize your costume.”

“Ah! It’s modeled on the only full-length portrait of Robespierre.”

 _Of course_ , Kurt thought. _Trust Magneto to dress up as a man best known for sending people to the guillotine._

“Who?” asked the knight.

Kurt half-expected Magneto to disdain his historical ignorance, but instead he looked pleased. His gray eyes gleamed like steel as he declaimed, “ _Liberté, égalité, fraternité!_ Liberty, equality, fraternity! Those were the words of Maximilien Robespierre, architect of the French Revolution, advocate against slavery and for direct democracy.”

“And he cut off a lot of heads,” Illyana put in. This seemed to distress her not a whit.

“Everyone gets so distracted by the excesses of the French Revolution that they forget why it happened, and what was gained,” said Magneto with a touch of annoyance. “He campaigned for universal suffrage for…”

Ororo drew Kurt away, her dark eyes glinting with mischief. “I believe we can skip the history lesson.” 

"Like the outfit," said Logan, draining his second beer and looking around for a third. "You make a better pirate than Scott did."

"Watch out," said Kitty. “That octopus is going to come to life and strangle you any second now.”

"I trust my friends to protect me, _leibchen_ ," said Kurt with a smile. 

Ororo was magnificent in dark glasses with red frames, a shimmering blue top, and a darker blue cape that wrapped around her body to create a headdress and a split skirt. 

“Who are you?” Kurt asked.

“Grace Jones,” Ororo replied. 

“And I know you,” said Kurt to Kitty, who wore a ruffled white shirt and leather pants and boots, and had a very still Lockheed perched on her shoulder, dusted with glittering gold. “You’re Menolly from _Dragonsong_ , and that’s Beauty. Whatever did you paint him with?”

“Gold eyeshadow,” Kitty admitted. “I borrowed it from Illyana. I should have told her what I wanted it for. I'm not sure she expected me to use up the entire thing.”

"Better replace it before she checks," advised Rachel. Her high heels clacked against the floor as she strolled up. "You can just walk into a store and buy it. Easy."

She spoke with a wonder and a jealous edge that reminded him that she came from a time where walking into a store and buying things, especially small frivolous things, things with no purpose except fun and pleasure, was not something people could do anymore.

She'd clearly taken advantage of this time's ability to shop, but he couldn't tell if she was in costume or not. She wore a fashionable green mini-dress with yellow detailing and a matching yellow belt and high heels. Its familiarity itched at his mind. _Was_ she dressed as someone? But who? Then, realizing, he stifled a gasp. Make the dress a leotard, the belt a sash, take the heels off the shoes, and turn the yellow lace at the front into a yellow phoenix emblem, and you had Jean Grey's costume. Or was he imagining things? Those were a lot of changes to make. Probably it was a chance resemblance, cobbled together of his knowledge and colors chosen on a whim, without intent... All the same, he noticed that Ororo and Logan were also staring at her.

The door bell rang, and Kitty and Kurt hurried to answer it. They were joined at the door by Doug (as a pumpkin) and Warlock (as a robot), as they scooped up candy to meet the trick-or-treaters. And so began Kurt’s favorite part of the night, as he greeted vampires and princesses (and one vampire princess), basketball players and mummies and superheroes, and an entire kindergarten class that had decided as a group to come as a flock of small, adorable bats.

Children and parents asked him how he got his tail to move like that, and laughed when he said, “What do you mean, how do I get it to move? The same way I move my hand!”

Children and parents asked if he was a demon, and laughed when he said, “I’m a pirate!”

And so the night wore on, until only Kurt was at the door when he opened it to see a nervous-looking mother and a girl of nine or so in a bathing suit, flip-flops, and a backpack. She was made up in the most extraordinarily realistic manner, with blue-green skin and kelp tangled in her dripping hair. 

“I’m a mermaid," announced the girl. "I only have a tail when I'm underwater. Want to see what I can do?”

“Julie, wait,” her mother said sharply. To Kurt, she said, “Do you mind if we get some water outside the door?”

“Not at all.” 

Julie’s eyes gleamed with delight as her mother pulled her away from the doorway, then hurriedly backed off. The girl raised her hands—Kurt saw a transparent squeeze-bulb in one hand, and a line of tubing running from it and into her backpack—and intoned, “I bring you the sea!”

The smell of brine arose as water poured from her palms, splashing down to the ground and puddling around her feet.

“That’s enough,” her mother said quickly.

Julie gave a sigh and dropped her hands. The water stopped.

“How did you do that?” Kurt asked. But he was pretty sure he knew.

“It’s my power,” said Julie. “Mermaids don’t have to stay in the water—they can bring the water to them!”

Behind her back, her mother winked at Kurt and gestured at the backpack.

“Very clever,” he said. And it was. Clever in a way that no one should have to be. “Let me shake your hand.”

He stepped forward and offered his hand to her mother. She frowned slightly when she took it, glancing down to stare at his three fingers and blue-skinned palm. It was one thing to see something, but quite another to feel it. 

“Yes,” Kurt said. He met her gaze, willing her not to be afraid. “Tonight is the night we hide in plain sight.” 

The woman seemed startled but not afraid. Curious. And with a tinge of rising hope. “Julie, would you like to shake his hand?”

Julie seized it eagerly, then looked up with a gasp. Her eyes—a very deep blue, with a nictitating membrane—gazed into his yellow ones. And the joy he saw in them was not because she thought he wore a mask, but because she knew he didn’t. “Oh!”

Speaking to both her and her mother, he said, “She’s a bit young for the school, but I’d like to introduce you both to our headmaster. Don’t worry about money. We have scholarships for gifted youngsters.”

“I don’t know if I’m gifted,” Julie said doubtfully. “They never tested me. I’m homeschooled.”

“You are gifted,” Kurt replied. “You’re gifted like me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Scott Summers in the octopus shirt: https://lyreofsheliak.tumblr.com/image/183249844746


End file.
